Let me start at the beginning.
I'm near the end of a decade long of medical training- four years of medical school, five years of orthopaedic surgery residency, and one year of orthopaedic oncology fellowship. Most people go straight from fellowship to being an attending- finally done with training and starting to make a salary that reflects it. However, I decided to do a second fellowship. Why? Because the next one is in New Zealand. Several years ago I was accepted for a six month trauma fellowship in Auckland, which was supposed to start immediately after my oncology fellowship ended in July 2023. Unfortunately, with COVID, the schedule changed and I was offered the next six month period starting January 2024. That left a six month gap between fellowships. My husband and I thought a lot about what we should do. Maybe scrap New Zealand and just start a real job after fellowship? Maybe find another six month fellowship in between? Neither of us had really had this much 'time off' in our lives. He went from undergrad to law school, then started his own practice. I hadn't had more than a six week break between all my steps in training. What would we do with six months?
We decided to move to Alaska, where I would get a locums tenens position for several months. Locums is basically a substitute doctor, filling in where there is a need. We also decided to do an epic road trip up to Alaska, taking our time and visiting as many national parks on the way as possible. Naturally, this lead us to think of a van or an RV to live in during this road trip. And if we were getting an RV anyway, we might as well live in it and save money on rent while living in Alaska. After considering all of the options, we decided on a tow-behind RV less than 20 ft long. We planned to buy one and went to several RV dealers to look at different models. However, we weren't impressed by any of the ones we found. William wanted it to be well insulated, given that we would be heading up into colder weather. The ones within our budget were mostly light weight and flimsy. Also, William is 6'2" and couldn't fully stand up in the shower in most of them. We then asked ourselves the fateful question, 'why don't we just build one?'. William was confident in his ability to build a customized trailer that would fit our needs for insulation and height requirements, while still being light enough to tow to Alaska. So, in October 2022, we bought a 16ft metal utility trailer and began the long building process (full details in next post). We finished in early August, and moved out of our rental house in Nashville and into the trailer, which we affectionately named 'Big Bitch' or BB for short.
Of course, our plans didn't work out. The locums job I had fell through, but we still really wanted to go visit Alaska. We travelled from Tennessee to Montana, but once again changed our plans. The wildfires were getting really bad in Montana and British Columbia, and we weren't sure we'd be able to make it through. Our gas mileage with BB was about 6 miles/gallon, and we had to stop for gas every 150-200 miles, which is longer than the distance between some gas stations on the lonely road to Alaska. So we decided to turn South to Arizona, where my parents live, to drop BB off and fly to Alaska. Ultimately a less expensive option than driving there and back. After then, who knows? I'm still looking for a locums jobs for a few months. More quality time in BB? A different adventure altogether? Your guess is as good as mine!
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